The Best Show You Didn't Watch

One of my favorite shows, canceled too soon, was Everwood. Great acting, compelling characters, and intriguing situations added up to a show that only a handful of people watched and loved. It tackled abortion, drugs, relationships -- typical teen fare -- in a way that admitted how complicated that teen fare really was and is. Things aren't so clearly right and wrong.

There were these two doctors: Treat Williams played Dr. Brown, and Tom Amandes played Dr. Abbott. They were great foils and great friends. Dr. Brown moved from NYC to Everwood, a small town in Colorado (filmed in Utah, I think), after his wife died.  

In somewhere around the second or third season, I think, Dr. Abbott gave a speech about marriage  (not a stand-in-front-of-crowd-and-speak speech, just one like a friend would give to another friend, or a father to a son). People get married, he said, in order to bear witness to each other's life. (I've been scouring the internet looking for the exact quote, but haven't been able to find it; but the "bear witness" part was it in a nutshell).

Anyway, what I'm getting at [warning, two heavy IPAs in my system] is that, regardless of our desire to marry and couple off legally, we all want witnesses to our lives. Proof that we existed. Evidence that our efforts weren't for naught.  I want that witness, but I haven't decided if husband and marriage is the answer. We shall see. But I wonder if my generation (and, ugh, later ones) think of facebook, twitter, etc, the same way that Dr. Abbott thought about marrriage - something that's proof of your existence; proof that you were there, that you contributed, that you were part of something, that people cared.

I don't mind my stutter step, stutter step. As long as I'm not alone in it, I'm ok. It's ok.